BetterLesson, NEA ANNOUNCE NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR EARLY CAREER TEACHER SUCCESS

BetterLesson and National Education Association (NEA) announce a partnership to bring TeachCycle, a program created by BetterLesson to provide personalized virtual coaching, to 220 early career teachers across eight regions including Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, Hawaii, Maine, Milwaukee, and Missouri.

“One important way we ensure our students’ success is by supporting the next generation of educators,” said NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia. “NEA is dedicated to improving student learning and enhancing the teaching profession. Our partnership with BetterLesson and the TeachCycle program will help our early career teachers prepare our nation’s students to thrive in school and beyond.”

BetterLesson’s TeachCycle matches expert coaches with teachers and engages them in a simple, powerful process of continuous improvement. The method is comprised of a three-step accelerated professional learning process for teachers: Teach, Measure, Learn. Through these steps, teachers are able to rapidly test and understand what teaching practices work best for their students.

By bringing TeachCycle to 220 early career teachers the NEA and BetterLesson anticipate teachers will have an effective method for tackling teaching challenges. These challenges can be related to classroom culture, core content (Math, English/Language Arts, Science), or blended learning pedagogy. In addition to working with their coach, teachers utilize a workflow tool to document student growth data and artifacts, track the progress of their teaching strategy, and connect with other teachers around the country. “TeachCycle is helping to dramatically improve teacher practice across the country. We are thrilled to partner with the NEA to bring this opportunity to even more teachers and particularly those teachers just starting their career.” says Alex Grodd, BetterLesson Founder and CEO.

Throughout the year, teachers meet virtually with their personal coach to tackle critical teaching challenges to target barriers to student growth. Together, the coach and teacher select previously proven successful strategies originating from the Master Teacher Project which was established 3 years ago by BetterLesson and the NEA to capture and share the best practices of effective NEA teachers.

In addition to a personal coach and the online platform, participating early-career teachers have access to 15 NEA Master Teacher Mentors who were selected to host online meetups exclusively available to NEA TeachCycle participants. All meetups are held between October 2015 and May 2016 with topics ranging from teaching high-quality STEM lessons to managing project-based learning experiences. The opportunity for early career teachers to connect with more veteran teachers can be extremely valuable. NEA Master Teacher Mentor Dr. Caroline J. Courter says, "After working with BetterLesson this year as a Master Teacher, I have come to strongly believe in the power of working collaboratively with a team and a mentor, seeing the growth I have made in my own teaching and hearing stories from my colleagues as well." Dr. Courter is a Gifted Specialist & Educational Consultant at the Gregory School of Science, Mathematics, and Technology located in Wilmington, North Carolina.

The NEA and BetterLesson are proud to bring this incredible professional learning experience to 220 members across the country. To learn more about the NEA, visit www.nea.org and to learn more about BetterLesson’s TeachCycle visit: www.betterlesson.com/teachcycle.

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The National Education Association (www.nea.org) is the nation’s largest professional employee organization, representing more than 3 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators and students preparing to become teachers.

Better Lesson is an edtech startup dedicated to preparing and supporting effective teachers at scale. Betterlesson has over 650,000 registered teachers who have access to 1.3 million teacher-created resources and 18,000 Master Teacher lessons. TeachCycle, BetterLesson’s continuous learning platform, is providing world-class virtual coaching to teachers across the country.

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